Ustadha Zaynab Ansari

The Journey

Assalamu alaykum,

As I begin my own spiritual journey, I want to hear from those who have taken this path before me. This podcast focuses on them and listening to their stories — uninterrupted. My name is Hebah Masood and I invite you to reflect on the trajectories of their lives, and the guidance and blessings provided by Allah swt along that journey.

Ustadha Zaynab Mansour Ansari is the daughter of converts — an African American mother and a Lebanese American father. Her parents converted to Islam in the 1970s and met Imam Zaid Shakir during the latter part of the decade. The impact of Imam Zaid’s friendship with her parents was profound and their spiritual journeys became deeply intertwined.

When Ustadha Zaynab was in her late teens, her parents wanted her to study Islam so the family moved to Iran for a few years, and later, at the advice of Imam Zaid and his wife, Umm Hassan, Ustadha Zaynab and her sister were enrolled at Abu Noor College in Damascus, Syria.

She returned to the United States after over 4 years of study in Syria and enrolled at Georgia State University, where she earned degrees in history and Middle Eastern Studies. During this time, she started a family and was invited to volunteer for the pioneering SunniPath Answers Service.

Ustadha Zaynab describes herself as a late bloomer. She felt intellectually and academically stimulated as a student in Damascus, but it wasn’t until her late 30s that she had a spiritual awakening — what she refers to as a Ghazalian moment of realization that what she was teaching was not necessarily being translated into her own life.

Today Ustadha Zaynab is the women’s scholar-in-residence at Tayseer Seminary where she teaches and mentors students under the guidance of Shaykh Hassan Lachheb. She also offers presentations, workshops, and classes for a number of other organizations, including for the Ribaat program founded by her teacher, Anse Dr. Tamara Gray.

In this episode, she opens up about and reflects on the tragic death of her husband over five years ago. She also discusses the benefits of having female-only learning spaces and the importance of female role models and spiritual guides.

Her story intersects with many familiar names: Imam Zaid Shakir and his wife Umm Hassan, Zaheer (Sunni Path), Anse Dr. Tamara Gray, Shaykh Shaykh Faraz Rabbani, Shaykh Muhammad Sukkar, Shaykha Houda al-Habash, Ustadh Dr. Nadeem Siddiqi, Shaykh Hassan Lachheb

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